Blogging again

It has been quite a while since I last posted anything to my blog so I guess I might start posting here again.  It was a pretty good way to get things off my chest and document our adventures.

 

I have been working on a bookcase/closet project and I finished it today.  Karen is deep into the tax business so she’s gone all the time now.  I have no end of projects that need to be done, but that’s the way it is when you are a home owner I guess.  Here is a picture of the book case side, this used to be the door into our office.

Now we need to finish painting the office and then the walls will match.

Fishing at Shasta

Last week Dennis, Bob and I spent the week fishing down at Lake Shasta.  I stress the word FISHING because there was little catching going on.  We got rained on a couple of days which seems to be normal for us even though we tried to pick a time when it wasn’t going to rain.  There was one day early in the week that I actually got most of my heavy clothes off and got down to a t-shirt but it was short lived and never happened again the rest of the week. 

One day we stayed in until after 1:00 in the afternoon waiting for the rain to stop, which it finally did.  I didn’t catch a fish that day but both Bob and Dennis did. 

The last evening we were there I added up the number of fish we had caught during the week and to my surprise it really sucked.  I looked back through my fishing log and found a year when I had caught over 180 fish myself and this year I only got 29.  At least we did get some nice ones the day we ate them for dinner so that was good.

One thing about fishing, you just have to love being there and enjoy it for the outing and when fishing with friends enjoy the company and I did both of those.  Catching would have been a good thing too, but then I guess you can’t have everything, can you?

Nice day for a bike ride!

And after I got some chores done, that’s exactly what I did.

I went out Stampfli Lane and up North Arm. It is all flat ground so not much exertion necessary and it was just a lovely day, nice and warm. Things are starting to get real green and the willows are even starting to come out. There is water running just about everywhere and the mosquitos are probably loving it since they are out in numbers.

I found a few little wild flowers but the prettiest ones were growing in our yard. I just love that I have a yard where wild flowers grow naturally. The weather is not going to stay this nice but then who would expect it to in the spring anyway. Next week we are planning on going fishing down at Shasta. Karen has to stay and work but I’m going with Bob and Dennis. So far the weather looks like it will cooperate with us but you never know. We have had to sit in pouring rain under a tarp trying to stay dry on some of our past trips and none of us wants to do that anymore so we are hoping for the best next week… we’ll see.

Happy Spring!

Yeah, first day of spring and you couldn’t tell by the weather.  I have been taking pictures from my deck of the changing of the seasons.  I have a spot marked out so my camera is always pointing exactly the same direction and today was my vernal equinox picture.  As I found out when I looked back through my pictures, it looks very similar to my autumnal equinox picture taken 6 months ago.  It’s been a long winter, to be sure and we don’t see an end in sight yet.

 

Come on spring, we are waiting for you!

Wow! My internet service!

Frontier High Speed Internet!

Winter’s back!

As well it should be this time of year.  Normally if we get weather like we have had this past week I just like to stay home and keep the wood stove stoked up but when your wife works in Quincy, about 20 miles away, you can’t just hole up and stay put.  Last night on the way back from picking her up in Quincy we got stopped when a big rig jack knifed and blocked the road.  We were there for a little over an hour and a half and the snow was just dumping the whole time.  They finally opened the road again and we got home around 9:00 after leaving Quincy a little after 6:00.  Driving conditions were what I like to describe as horrendous and if I didn’t have to be there you couldn’t have made me go no matter what.  So much for my vow to never drive anywhere when the road conditions are that bad.

This morning I went out and took a couple of pictures in the yard so you can see how much it snowed here in the last few days.

We are supposed to have a break today into Monday and Tuesday and then next week about Thursday it’s supposed to come again with a chance of snow even down into the Sacramento Valley.  By that time all of this will be gone and we will be ready for the next batch.  I’m not gonna drive in it!  Yeah, Right!

Coriolis effect

Somewhere in my past training I remember hearing that tree growth is affected by the turning of the earth in what is called the coriolis effect.  My spell checker says it is spelled wrong but I don’t think it is.  If you do a Google search for it you’ll find that it indeed spelled correctly.  Anyway, the other day I was out hiking in the hills around my house and I found this old snag that really shows the coriolis effect.

It is common to see snags with this effect and anyone who has done any amount of firefighting has seen this but this tree had a really tight spiral and I thought it looked cool.  Anyway, when you see this, now you know what it is.